Starting the School Year With A Black Eye

            As the start of a new school year approaches, students and parents begin to experience a gambit of emotions from anxiety to elation, from resentment to anticipation, and from denial to acceptance.  At the high school level, these emotions are intensified for students and parents of incoming freshmen and rising seniors.

            Parents and students of incoming freshmen will have to worry about the transition from middle school, familiarizing themselves with the faculty and the academic work load, and fitting in and finding their place within the hierarchy of high school.  Parents and students of seniors will have to worry about college applications, getting faculty recommendations, taking the SAT/ACT, deciding who to ask or take to the prom, and enjoying the last year of protected young adulthood.

            Unfortunately, for one high school in Central Bucks County, Pennsylvania, controversy and unwanted national attention may over shadow the start of the school year.  Last year, a high school teacher wrote disparaging remarks on her blog about her students.  The teacher called some of her students’ as “frightfully dim,“ “whiny,” and “utterly loathsome[i] (these were the less derogatory comments).  The teacher was placed on suspension for her comments and during the summer and waited for the district to decide the consequences for her public disrespect of her students.

            Last week the district reinstated the teacher (who showed no remorse) and she was assigned back to the school and where the incident occurred.  The teacher was also given the same grade and class schedule as last year.  According to the teachers attorney: “there is nothing different than before[ii]”

            I am sure there are a number of school staff, parents and students who will disagree with the attorney’s statement.  Whether they agree or disagree with their colleagues comments, there will be some tension among staff.  Tension between those who support the rights of the teacher’s free speech and non-supporters who feel the teacher crossed the unspoken line of professional conduct where you do not publically denigrate your students.  More importantly, there will be parents who will not want their child to be assigned to the teacher’s class.  Those parents will vocalize their concern about their child being assigned to a class where the perception is the teacher does not like children.  There will also be some parents who will scrutinize everything the teacher does and challenge every grade and comment that is made against their child.

            Finally, there will be students who may use the situation to their advantage and threaten to complain to the principal, their parents, or the district about the teacher in order to get a good grade without actually earning it.  These students understand the teacher is powerless, has no credibility, and has lost the respect of her students.  These students will make it their mission to be disruptive.

The district did not discuss the rationale of its decision.  However, they must understand the results of their decision was a slap in the face to the students.  The decision sent the message that public disparagement of students by a teacher is acceptable.  This decision could destroy the delicate balance of the teacher student relationship and hinder learning.  If students are skeptical about their teachers intentions, they will not respond positively to what the teacher is trying to teach.  Districts are supposed to protect students from antagonistic staff members and prevent them from crossing the unspoken line of professionalism that all educators must follow.

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[i] www.philly.com/philly/education/201107/28_Central_Bucks_East_Teacher_returning...

[ii] Ibid.